


human nature

by attheborder



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Declarations Of Love, Episode AU: s03e08 Human Nature, Fusion - Doctor Who, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Pining, Post-Canon, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), The Power Of Love, Wales, Way too much plot, Welsh Aziraphale (Good Omens), Winter, cardiff: become human, turned human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 10:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19904056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: When you’re talking about bodies locked in orbit, forever circling each other, it takes two to tango. Forces opposed; action and reaction. One, and the other.But the blank-slate version of Aziraphale sleeping beside Crowley in this cold little bed had no fear of Heaven, no fear of Falling. Not even a fear of snakes. He only had, as all humans did, the knowledge of good and bad, and the ability to make a choice.***Crowley must turn Aziraphale human in order to hide him from Heaven.(Inspired by/fusion with Doctor Who’s Human Nature/Family of Blood arc)





	human nature

**Author's Note:**

> everyone else: writes deeply moving, poetic original stories about longing and yearning  
> me: just straight up rewrites a doctor who episode from 12 years ago because i’m incorrigible
> 
> thank you to billypotts and soixante--quinze for beta & britpicking respectively!

_Knowledge is a rumor until it lives in the body._

_—_ The OA

Fell’s Books & Sundries had been open for less than a week, on Salisbury Road to the east of Cardiff University, but it already had its regulars, as noted carefully by its owner, Ezra Fell. 

There were the two girls with dyed hair, one pink and one highlighter-yellow, who picked through the graphic novel section every other afternoon; the boy in the red puffer jacket and sleek headphones who’d plant himself firmly in the armchair by the poetry shelf; the mother with her extremely chubby baby in a sling, coming by each morning to pick out something new from the magazine rack. 

And then there was the man in black. He’d wandered past on the second day, gazing just for a moment through the dirty glass of the front window before moving on. On the fourth day, he’d entered, on legs so skinny that his top half seemed rather like a plate kept aloft on a pole by a circus performer, gyrations included, and made a slow circuit around the outer ring of the store.

He paused by the history section, and spent a long while looking up at the shelves stuffed full of books on the Roman Empire, the Black Death, the Aztecs and the Mongols. Then, without a word, he left.

But he was back the next afternoon, still wearing those impenetrable dark glasses, stalking circles about the shop as though he’d left something behind and was retracing his steps. 

“Can I help you?” asked Ezra, coming over. He wasn’t one to hover, but he did always like to know what sort of thing a customer was looking for, especially if they’d been in before and hadn’t made a purchase yet.

“Oh.” The man startled at Ezra’s approach, as if he wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of customer service. “I suppose you’ll be wanting me to buy something.”

“Well, this _is_ a bookshop,” said Ezra. “I wouldn’t be much of a bookseller if I didn’t, you know, try and sell them.” 

He thought that had been quite a witty quip, but evidently it was not to the man in black’s liking, because he didn’t smile. 

“Here,” offered Ezra, reaching up to pull a book down off the shelf and then handing it over. “Try this one. History of the _moai_ heads on Easter Island. Fascinating stuff.” 

“Just opened, then?” the man in black asked, ever so casually. He was flipping through the book, but behind those dark glasses he could have been looking anywhere. Maybe even at _him._

“That’s right, ah…” 

The man looked up now, turning those shaded lenses directly at Ezra, but didn’t introduce himself. Ezra barreled ahead anyway, the black-hole magnetism of the stranger tugging the words out of him like a scarf from a magician’s sleeve. 

“...Yes, just opened on Monday, I was worried, but it’s been rather a success, more customers today than I’d have in a week back in Port Talbot, that’s where I had this shop before.... I’m Ezra Fell, by the way. Proprietor.” 

“Mm.” The man flipped the book closed. “I’ll take this one, then.”

That had been easier than Ezra expected. He rang the man up at the till, trying not to let his eyes linger on the way the weak afternoon sun coming through the shop window caught his hair, illuminating each strand a different hue: sunset, gold, apple-red. 

Then the man was gone, shadow-quick out the door, but not before throwing a glance over his shoulder that hit Ezra square in the chest with unexpected, nearly physical force. Something about those glasses.

Suddenly, Ezra felt very tired. His lower back hurt, and his throat was beginning to itch with the implicit threat of a creeping head cold. It was hard work, running a shop. Inventory and accounts and shelving and not to mention everybody coming through right off the streets, touching the books with their dirty fingers, spreading germs. It was a miracle he’d never contracted something deadly, really.

He made a mental note to put up a _Help Wanted_ sign in the door the next day. He’d never had to hire a shop assistant in Port Talbot, but he was getting older, and it made sense. This location was already showing an unexpected trend towards the profitable, one that made convenience outweigh discomfort at the thought of some stranger running the till. 

At closing time, he locked up and went upstairs to the small, bare flat he’d rented alongside the shop below. He made himself a cup of tea and microwaved a cheap frozen curry, which he consumed with little pleasure. 

Then, to his book, and then (sooner than he would’ve liked, but he was so tired) to bed, where he fell into a cold and lonely sleep, and dreamed of Eden.

***

It had been off the cuff, Crowley’s remark on the bench in Berkeley Square about the “big one”— just something conversationally daring enough to take his mind off of the realization, rapidly condensing in the deep and silent places of his body, that the two of them were now free of the expectations that had bound them for millennia. He didn’t want to think about that, and what it might _mean,_ so he joked about war.

In any case, it was just as likely that Heaven and Hell would gear up to just fight each other again as it was they’d team up against the humans. They were surely still itching for _some_ kind of battle, but Crowley was no prophet. There was no real way he could _know._ It wasn’t as if he’d ever been looped in on that sort of thing, even back in the early days when he took his job a lot more seriously. 

By the time they were seated at the Ritz, he’d put it out of his mind. And then later, as they drank a celebratory bottle of scotch in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop, Crowley wasn’t thinking about Heaven or Hell at all. He was focusing on breathing in the impossible scent of the resurrected room, that heady mix of ink and dust and mildew and the quicksilver sky-scent of the angel beside him that not even a new cologne could disguise. 

The night grew late and Aziraphale grew quiet, his fingers worrying at the frayed edge of the sofa cushion. Crowley wondered if, after everything, the time had finally come. 

But Crowley wouldn’t— _couldn’t_ be the one to say something. He’d already come so close to losing Aziraphale. He never wanted to feel that way again, the way he’d felt in that dingy pub, in the hours before the shape of the angel had found fit to swim before his eyes, gossamer in the dimness. He’d rambled on about Falling and Hell to try and give himself some goddamn perspective, but it was useless— the loss of his own angelic name, so long ago, was nothing, _nothing_ at all compared to the ragged wound that had torn open inside himself in the burning bookshop, when he believed Aziraphale was gone forever.

He thought he knew how it would go. One wrong word and Aziraphale would start to make excuses, distance himself, and Crowley would have to wait to be invited back in, as he always did, except you’d never know how long that would take and he wouldn’t have work to distract him while he waited anymore.

So he took his leave of the angel, and went back to his flat. This was how it was going to be. Second verse, same as the first. Maybe, if Crowley was lucky, some new harmonies. 

Aziraphale kept his odd hours at the shop; Crowley tended his plants and took the Bentley on long, fast drives around the city. 

Then came the revelation, after about a week, that his phone was ringing quite a bit more than it used to, pre-Apocalypse. Aziraphale calling to invite him over for tea, for breakfast, for brunch at tiny little places where they served the food on slabs of wood and the drinks in little jars.

It was slow, and steady, and lovely, just like Aziraphale, and Crowley began to let himself relax into it, like a good massage, without trying to predict or presume what was waiting on the other side of it, or even if there _was_ another side at all.

And then, after a few months, a note was dropped in through the front door of the bookshop. It had the weight of urgent truth, and it didn’t leave much to the imagination.

_They are coming for the angel. The first skirmish is planned for three months hence. He will be used as a weapon against the forces of hell. Used until he is gone. You must hide him until the date is past; if they cannot find him, they will go ahead without him. Then, while they are fighting, you can make your escape._

The note was not signed. The lined paper was not the crisply Xerox’d white sheet of Heaven, nor the grubby, stained foolscap of Hell. The handwriting was unfamiliar, mundane. It could’ve been from anybody— well, anybody but Agnes Nutter, the spelling was too good. 

“We could come clean,” said Crowley frantically, pacing back and forth. “They obviously think you’re some kind of hellfire-immune battle angel, which is, er, my bad, so we just tell them what we did, and they leave us alone—” 

Aziraphale bit his lip. “No, no, no— then they’ll just kill me, like they wanted to in the first place. And then they might tell Hell, who will do the same to you. We’ll be no good to anybody then.”

This seemed logical enough to Crowley, though he didn’t like the sound of it at all. He reached for the part of his mind where his plots and schemes germinated, in neat rows like flowerbeds, and found it barren and dusty. Digging around for something to say, he could come up only with stammered disbelief.

“Can that really be it, though? Three months, and then you’re safe?”

“It sounds like their style,” said Aziraphale, fretfully. “They’re all about plans, Upstairs. If they can’t find me by the time of the battle, they’ll chalk it up to the will of the Almighty. I’ve just got to make myself scarce until then.”

“But how are you going to hide from Heaven? You’re an _angel_ , they _know_ you, they could track you down anywhere in the _universe_ —” 

And then, without warning, the idea bloomed in Crowley’s head, like on one of those time-lapse nature shows he loved so much. But this was not a rose, unfurling with delicate grace— it was something more akin to a molting, a grotesque emergence of something terrifying.

“What is it? Have you thought of something?” Aziraphale’s eyes flicked desperately to the door, as if Gabriel and the rest were due to come bursting in at any moment— which, to be fair, they were. 

“There is… a contingency plan, of sorts,” said Crowley, already regretting the words as they left his mouth. “Once exorcisms really started catching on up here, and demons could be in danger of getting caught, messed about by humans… they taught us a technique.” 

And, through gritted teeth, he quickly explained the concept of the chameleon curse. Demonic magic, able to render another demon temporarily human in order to escape detection. There was no reason, Crowley told Aziraphale, that the curse shouldn’t work on an angel— especially after Aziraphale himself had proven so recently that angels could possess human bodies, just like demons could. The curse would map a human identity onto his corporation, and transfer his angelic soul to a temporary vessel for safekeeping. This would render Aziraphale invisible to Heaven, and not to mention useless to them as a weapon.

“The identity can be randomized,” said Crowley. “To throw them further off the scent.”

“Randomized? But I could end up— _American,_ or something!” The fear that had been flickering across the angel’s face finally took root there, settled and grew.

“Well. Er. Perhaps not _that_ random, then.”

Aziraphale crossed the room and sat down in his armchair, taking deep breaths. The note lay on the table, emanating a coldly cruel sense of unfairness.

“We’ll need something to— to put you in,” said Crowley, viscerally hating the way it made Aziraphale sound like some kind of inanimate commodity. He knelt on the floor beside the angel’s chair. 

Aziraphale thought for barely a moment before retrieving his watch from his waistcoat pocket. “This will have to do,” he said, inspecting it, his hands shaking. “1879, New York City. Lovely little shop in the jewelry district…”

“You won’t remember that. You’ll think it’s just a broken old piece of junk.” 

Aziraphale smiled weakly. “Keep an eye on me, Crowley. Keep me safe. Be my friend, even. I’m sure I’ll be needing one. Or, rather— _he_ will.”

He handed Crowley the watch. Crowley turned it over; angel’s wings were engraved into the top, delicate streaks of line and curve and feather forming an intricate, interlaced pattern. He opened it. Inside, the hands ticked away. Minutes passing. Time running out.

“Please don’t make me do this to you,” said Crowley, staring down at the watch, his voice taut and creaking against the pressure building up in his throat.

“It’s just three months, my dear, and then we can figure out what to do, how to stop them from fighting, but we won’t be able to do that if they’ve _got_ me, if they kill me—”

Crowley wanted to protest, but he couldn’t, he hated how much sense Aziraphale was making, if this was what it would take to keep him safe then of _course_ Crowley would do it, he would do _anything,_ he hoped the angel knew that. And there was so much more he wished Aziraphale knew, but now time was up, and if something went _wrong,_ if the plan failed and Heaven got to Aziraphale and bled him dry and Crowley never got the chance—

No. This _had_ to work. 

Crowley set the open watch down on the cushion at Aziraphale’s side.

“It’s going to hurt, isn’t it,” said Aziraphale quietly, his voice brittle. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it will.” 

Crowley could have done it with his hands in his pockets; demonic power was not bound by rules of physical contact, and Aziraphale knew this just as well as he did.

But the angel didn’t remark on that when Crowley moved his hands to those pale temples, pressing the spider-lengths of his fingers up into soft sun-white curls. 

Aziraphale’s eyes were wide, and the color of the sea, and very, very scared. 

Crowley said, “Okay. Here we go.” 

Crowley meant, _I’m so sorry. I love you. I’ll keep you safe._

There was a scream, and it seemed to go on forever. 

And then: silence.

***

The new Cardiff shop had become a haunt of students and locals alike. The regular hours and welcoming atmosphere of the place, not to mention the free Wi-Fi and the bowls of sweets set out neatly amongst the shelves, had attracted a devoted clientele. It couldn’t have been more different than Aziraphale’s shop in Soho, which Crowley supposed was really the whole point. 

Two days after he’d last visited and gone home with a book on big face rocks that he had no plans to read whatsoever, Crowley strolled back into Fell’s Books & Sundries. 

It had been a true test of his self control to not come in yesterday. He knew he had to take it slow, else risk scaring Aziraphale— no, _Ezra—_ off, but it was like asking a man dying of dehydration to stay away from an abundant oasis. 

But Aziraphale had said it himself — _Be my friend._ So here Crowley was. He hadn’t made a new friend in thousands of years, not _really_. He worried, just a bit, that he’d forgotten how.

The shopkeeper was standing behind the till, writing one of those little book recommendations for the shelves on a pad of paper. Crowley sidled very slowly up to him, as though Ezra were an anxious stray cat.

Ezra looked up. “Oh. Hullo.”

“Hi.”

“Finish the book?” 

“Oh, yes,” Crowley lied. “Really interesting stuff.”

He swung his gaze around the shop behind his glasses, trying to think of a way to keep the conversation going. “Er, saw the sign on the door. You’re hiring?” 

Ezra fiddled with his pen. “Mm, that’s right. Never done it before, but it seems to be the way the wind is blowing. I’m a little bit of a control freak, to be honest, but if I can find someone who’s a good fit, then…”

He eyed Crowley with an impenetrable expression. It was so strange, Crowley thought, to not be able to know from a look what he was feeling anymore. The frame was the same, but the painting was different.

“Why? Are you thinking of applying?” Ezra continued.

“No— no. I’ve got a— no. Not right now.” Crowley did not elaborate further.

“Ah. Of course,” said Ezra. “Well, your business is appreciated nonetheless. If you’re looking for another book, I’m just getting my recommendations shelf all set up now. We’ve got something for everyone, new novels and nonfiction…”

Crowley was grateful for his shades, which were performing the thankless task of concealing the way he couldn’t stop staring at that all-too-familiar face; at hair the color of clean paper and that trusting, expressive brow. 

Then he had the strange thought of wishing he also had something to cover his ears, as if Ezra could see or sense somehow the intensity of attention he was paying to his voice, the broad and lilting melody of that strange new accent. It was more than a little painful, as a reminder of how the man in front of him was _not_ Aziraphale— but it was also strangely beautiful, and it stuck in Crowley’s head like a song, a wavelength he couldn’t bear to tune out. 

“And you know,” Ezra was saying slowly now, “if you’re going to be making a habit of showing up here, I’d be remiss if I didn’t make an effort to learn your name.”

Crowley suppressed the shameful shiver that crawled up his spine at the phrase _make an effort,_ and then said, “Crowley. Anthony Crowley. I’ve been waiting for you to ask.” 

He realized he was flirting. He was tempting. It was an instinct baser than breathing for him, and he knew Aziraphale had long grown immune to his charms, or at least used enough to them to bat them away with pursed lips and disapproving looks, wielded like shields. So he would relax around him, let loose with abandon, with hardly a fear for the consequences. 

But this strange, sweet human wearing Aziraphale’s body didn’t have that built-up resistance. Or even the knowledge to know it was something he needed to have in the first place, to know that Crowley was dangerous, deadly, was a serpent, was _the_ serpent. 

Crowley resolved to tone it down, but he worried it might have been too late. And then, quickly, he pushed that worry away by dutifully thinking of worse things: vengeful angels, bodily harm, books burning in the night, all accompanied by a fretful litany of _stay on task, you idiot._

He let Ezra lead him over to the recommended shelf and sell him a paperback copy of _The People In The Trees_ by Hanya Yanagihara. And he wanted to figure out an excuse to stay, to linger there for longer, but there was a line of customers behind him waiting to check out, so he left. 

Crowley didn’t look back this time, as he stepped through the door, and so he missed the way Ezra watched him go, his hands falling still at the till’s keypad, until the lady at the front of the line coughed loudly and he returned, apologetically, to what he’d been doing. 

***

Once a dozen or so people had responded to the _Help Wanted_ sign, dropping off paper resumes, Ezra took the sign down and dutifully scheduled interviews. 

Many of the applicants had zero retail experience, which made them easy to eliminate. Ezra knew he needed someone he could trust to actually get books _sold,_ and treat customers well while they were at it— someone who wasn’t just in it for the paycheck. A few of the others seemed to have little to no interest in books or reading, which was just as bad, if not worse. 

And then there was Jade Jenkins, the girl with the highlighter-yellow hair who’d been frequenting the shop since opening day. She was in her last term at the university, studying folklore and mythology, and used to work at a newsagents in the city centre. She was quick-witted and smart and had a great love of mid-century science fiction, which marked her out immediately to Ezra as a kindred spirit. What started as a matter-of-fact job interview turned rapidly to a deep discussion of James Tiptree Jr.’s seminal cyberfeminist novella _The Girl Who Was Plugged In,_ and then Ezra had called off the day’s remaining interviews and offered Jade the job on the spot. She began the next day, a Tuesday.

On Thursday she was in the back of the shop, mopping up a sticky mess of spilled coffee which had been left behind by a rude customer. The door opened, and a red-haired man walked in. Through the shelves, Jade watched her boss approach the man and have a short conversation, leaning in closer to him than was perhaps necessary. She thought the man looked familiar, perhaps a professor at the university, but then she realized, no— she’d seen him _here_ before, in the shop, exchanging words with Mr. Fell, lingering around the shelves and flipping through books seemingly at random. 

“Was that your boyfriend, Mr. Fell?” asked Jade innocently, as Ezra made his way back to the till. The red-haired man had taken a seat in a reading chair up near the front, and was scrolling on his phone. 

“What? No! I barely know him— he’s just— just a customer—”

“Really? Well, he’s definitely into you.” 

“How would _you_ know?”

“I’m psychic,” she responded seriously.

“No, you’re not, don’t be daft.” Ezra gave her a skeptical glance that wordlessly conveyed to Jade that if he wasn’t _currently_ a Dawkins adherent, he probably had been at some point in the recent past. 

“I _am,_ though— it runs in my family. Swear. My nan, she could always tell when the floods were about to come. And my uncle bet big on Amazon stock in the 90s, now he’s got this massive estate on Skye.” 

Ezra rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe in that sort of thing, Jade. You were probably just picking up cues from our body language.”

“ _Our_ body language, you said? Hey, Freudian slip!” Jade crowed gleefully. 

Busying himself with organizing the flyers for local events that had started to dot the counter in piles, Ezra shook his head. “He’s, well. I don’t even know if he’s even— actually gay. Or— he could be married, or—”

“Look, just _ask_ him. You’re both grown men, not blushing teenagers. You can spare a little directness before you drop dead.” 

She had a point there. He _was_ a business owner, after all, wasn’t he?

“I’ve got _such_ a good feeling about it,” Jade continued, reassuringly. “Last time I felt this good was the night before I asked my girlfriend out. I’m telling you, it’s a done deal.” She wagged a neon-orange-painted finger at him, then went to take the mop back to the broom closet. 

Ezra gave her retreating form a reflexive smile, and then quickly wiped it off his face with a distracted wince. Here he was, squarely middle-aged and taking relationship advice from a _student._ He was going soft. 

Nevertheless, when an hour had passed and he glanced up to see the dark sprawl of Anthony Crowley still at rest in the armchair near the front, he put down his inventory clipboard and made his way over. 

“I’m going to give Jade the chance to close up on her own tonight,” he said carefully. “Which leaves me with my evening free, starting now.” 

Anthony shifted in his seat, letting his phone drop to his lap as he looked up at Ezra. “And…?”

“And, well. There’s a pub around the corner… I thought we could go for a drink, perhaps. If you’re not busy.” 

He’d sold Anthony at least seven books by now, and had at least as many casual conversations with him; if it turned out this man was just an overly personable customer and not at all interested in being friends (or anything more), Ezra was going to be forced to keep Jade on mop duty for the next thousand years as vengeance.

So when Anthony’s mouth curled into a tight half-smile and he said “Alright, then,” Ezra couldn’t help but break into a grin. 

From the back, Jade watched her boss leave with the tall man in black. 

_Get it, Mr. Fell!_ she thought, shamelessly. 

***

Priorities. Crowley knew he had them. They went something along the lines of, _1: Keep Aziraphale safe. 2: Keep an eye out for angels. If any are spotted, see 1. 3: Keep yourself safe so that you can keep right on doing 1 and 2._

But every time he stepped into the shop and he saw that blond head bobbing amongst the shelves, perfectly happy and self-sufficient without his memories, without his powers, without Crowley, he wanted to break things. He wanted to break _this_ thing, this plan, Heaven be damned he wanted to storm in there and open that watch up and bring Aziraphale _back,_ back to _him._

And _Cardiff,_ fucking Cardiff, he knew he should by all rights be grateful the random whims of the curse hadn’t sent them off to Alice Springs or Dubai or, someone forbid, _Texas,_ but it was comically difficult to stay focused on life, death, and the looming threat of angelic warfare while he was surrounded by the endless dull drabness of a Welsh winter. 

It wasn’t as if he could go back to London, even for a quick jaunt, not when agents of Heaven had likely staked out his building, ready to follow him right back to Aziraphale if he turned up there again. He’d had to leave the Bentley behind, a secondary pang that hummed sadly underneath the overwhelming deprivation of Aziraphale’s absence.

Luckily, Heaven couldn’t track demons the way they could angels, a real miracle if there ever was one. Otherwise he would’ve had to get himself as far from Aziraphale as possible and wait out the three months in solitude— an impossible prospect. 

So at least here amongst the gray there was a light, and that light was Aziraphale, and the promise that soon, _soon,_ Crowley would be able open the watch and return him to himself.

Drinks at the pub around the corner from the shop that evening had been a Twilight Zone-level mess of bizarre, at least for Crowley. It was the epitome of a normal-bloke spot, fitting for a normal bloke like Ezra Fell, but the incongruity of a man who looked an awful lot like Aziraphale reclining against a dirty bar and sipping a pint (of all things) was nearly enough to keep Crowley from coherence. But, somehow, he managed. 

And then they did dinner the next night, and then they did drinks again the night after that, and it was the most normal thing in the world except it _wasn’t,_ because Crowley had to bite his tongue every other sentence to prevent something spilling out, some reference to the Apocalypse or the Arrangement or a moment shared, thousands of years ago, in Carthage or Tenochtitlan, places long dead to the human sitting beside him. 

Ezra didn’t say things like “pip pip” and “tickety-boo.” He didn’t wear hundred-year-old clothes. He didn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of French wines. 

But so much was the same. He was gracefully intelligent, and bitingly sarcastic, and _stubborn_ , in that implacable Aziraphalean way, and his mouth would twist up in that smile Crowley had learned long ago to tease out with precision, and it was enough, it _could_ be enough, for now, if Crowley allowed it to be.

Ezra asked about the dark glasses, on their fourth outing together, and he really didn’t want to _pry,_ but he was just _curious,_ Anthony, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to—

“Medical condition,” said Crowley quickly, who had been preparing for the question since the second he first stepped into the new and strange environment of Fell’s Books. “A malformation of the pupils. Light sensitivity.”

Ezra nodded sympathetically, and then turned the subject to politics, which kept them engaged for the rest of the evening without having to resort to revealing more intimate personal details. 

So, there it was: he’d done it. He’d made friends with Ezra. The hard part was over. Now, all he needed was to maintain this casual relationship, at a level appropriate for continued surveillance and protection, for a little over two more months. Easy as… whatever things were as easy as.

Crowley had rented a room in Cardiff, but he was rarely ever there. He’d gotten in the habit of sleeping, it was true, but there was something about the idea of indulging in the luxury of rest when Aziraphale was out there, so vulnerable, so defenseless, that seemed wholly inappropriate if not altogether irresponsible. 

The bedsit was mainly being used as a storage facility for the books he allowed Ezra to keep selling him. They’d piled up steadily, unread day after day, forming a paperback record that marked out every time Crowley had looked into Aziraphale’s eyes and found nobody but a stranger. 

Instead of sleeping, Crowley walked. He walked along the river and up through the park, out into the dense and graying neighborhoods and down streets lined with shops, shuttered for the night. And every night his legs would carry him once, twice, three times past the bookshop (not _the_ bookshop, no, that one was in London, this one was a falsehood, a facade) and the flat above. 

If he stood across the street and looked up at the dark little building, focusing, straining against the limits of his perception, he could almost pretend he could _feel_ Aziraphale, hear him like a heartbeat. It was like one of those funny Magic Eye posters, where you had to let yourself go cross-eyed in order to see the real picture. 

But then he’d snap back into focus again, and the illusion would disappear, and he’d be back where he started— barely a third of the way into this absurd, terrifying, fragile experiment that was the only thing standing in the way between Aziraphale and Heaven’s wrath.

***

Ezra Fell couldn’t fall asleep. It was a shame, really— he loved falling asleep, and he especially loved what came after.

But even after chamomile with milk and two melatonin, there he was, staring up at the cracked ceiling, picking away at his already-raw cuticles. The bedside clock blinked its ungodly numerals regrettably, as if to say _sorry, buddy, it’s not happening._

So he got up, got dressed, and went for a walk. His fingers itched to hold a cigarette but he’d quit ages ago, and didn’t even keep them around anymore. 

The street outside was empty and silent. An empty bag of crisps blew past Ezra’s feet, a polyethylene tumbleweed out of a Welsh Western. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and buried his face in his scarf and headed west, towards the university campus. 

Head bowed and eyes winched shut against the frigid gusts, he wasn’t bothering keep a lookout for anyone on the pavement— surely, nobody else would be out at this hour. 

But this theory was disproven only ten minutes into his walk, when he collided chest-first with a tall, solid form, warm in a way the air wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, so sorry, I wasn’t— Oh.” 

He’d looked up, and seen his own reflection, in familiar black glass circles glimmering at him out of the night. 

“Hi,” said Anthony. “What are you—” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ezra admitted, staring up breathlessly at Anthony. The streetlight was casting his face in shadow, cheekbones sculpted out of night, jawline sharp and defined against the dark sweep of his neck. 

“Hm. Me either.” 

“Do— do you live nearby?”

Anthony shook his head. “No. I’m— it’s far.”

“You must be cold,” Ezra said, noticing with a shock that Anthony wasn’t even wearing a coat. “We’re only a few blocks from my— I. Well. Would you like to come over?” 

His heart was pounding. The freezing wind was whistling over his ears, turning them red and raw; he’d walked out without a hat on, not thinking. Well, he had been thinking, but not about seasonally-appropriate outerwear. In fact, he’d been thinking about this very man, this new friend of his. Anthony Crowley, indeed.

Jade Jenkins’ smug face swam unbidden before his mind’s eye, before dispersing in an enthusiastic burst of rainbow confetti. _A bit much, don’t you think?_ he scolded his subconscious.

Anthony nodded, and Ezra felt hot relief flood his core like a shot of something strong. “Alright. This way,” he said, and they began to walk back up the street, the way Ezra had come.

***

They didn’t talk, it was too cold. Or at least, too cold for Ezra; Crowley was immune to temperature-based discomfort, when he wanted to be, which was most of the time. 

Ezra unlocked the door and they ascended up into the flat. It was barely furnished, but there was a coat rack at the entrance that he busied himself removing his outerwear onto. Crowley lingered by the entrance, watching, his body as still as Ezra’s was overflowing with energy.

“You must be liking this city quite a bit, to take such long walks on a cold night,” Ezra said conversationally.

“Er. It’s nice.” 

“It’s no London, I understand,” Ezra demurred, “but it has its charms. Tea?” 

Crowley nodded, followed Ezra into the tiny kitchen, and leaned against the counter as Ezra made tea. 

“Hope I haven’t gotten frostbite on my ears,” Ezra said. “And look at you, you’re not even red! I’ll take some of whatever you’ve got, you must be descended from a polar bear. Can we swap?” 

“Choose your faces wisely, for soon you shall be playing with fire,” intoned Crowley, almost involuntarily.

Ezra frowned, abstractly pensive as he poured the hot water. “Are you quoting something at me? That’s from a movie, isn’t it?” 

Crowley said nothing. Ezra handed him a mug, and they went to sit down at the kitchen table, which was covered in a festive mulch of notebooks and paper.

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry for the mess, I wasn’t expecting company tonight,” said Ezra, hastily clearing away the scraps. 

“No, no— it’s alright.” Almost on instinct, Crowley reached down and picked up one of the loose pages before Ezra could sweep it off the table. He looked at it, and his heart stopped.

“What’s this?” 

Ezra leaned over to see what Crowley had in his hand.

“Ooh, that’s a dream I had. I’ve been having the most tremendous dreams, ever since moving here. Remarkable stuff. That one,” he pointed at the paper, “was all about this incredible weapon, which was lost at the beginning of time…”

Crowley couldn’t tear his eyes away from the page. There, amidst scribbles in a looser version of Aziraphale’s neat, old-fashioned print, was a drawing of a flaming sword. _The_ flaming sword. He scanned the lines of text, trying to parse the disjointed, dreamlike scrawls: _don’t let the sun go down on you here_ and _flamed like a bar of magnesium_ and _I gave it away_.

“Wow,” said Crowley, quite unable to say anything else. 

Ezra beamed. “Here, come, that one’s just nonsense, I’ll show you the real stuff…”

They abandoned their mugs in the kitchen, and Ezra led Crowley into his small bedroom. The walls were covered with sheets of paper, just like the ones on the table— sketches and outlines and paragraphs and lists and diagrams. Over there, above the nightstand, Crowley saw a drawing of a park bench. Pinned above the desk was a perfectly rendered portrait of Anathema Device. And right beside them, near the door, was an illustration of the Bentley. Crowley’s stomach performed an elaborate, Olympics-worthy gymnastics routine as he let his eyes drift across it, picking out the phrases _ninety miles an hour_ and _more like a full-body glove._

“It’s going to be a novel, based on my dreams,” said Ezra. “This is what I have so far. The stories just keep coming, so I keep writing them down, drawing pictures, trying to figure out how it all fits together...” 

“It’s beautiful,” said Crowley, because it was. Beautiful and impossible and more true than anyone else would ever know. 

But as he glanced around, jumping from page to page, he began to feel anxious. If the dreams got any more vivid, caused Ezra to remember any more, it might trigger an early deactivation of the curse; or perhaps the dreams themselves might alert Heaven, somehow— Crowley couldn’t possibly know. It would be all he could do to make sure Ezra kept believing that everything here was just a product of an overactive imagination.

When he finally brought his eyes back down from their journey around the perimeter of the room, he noticed that Ezra had stepped closer. He was looking right up at Crowley, with a deep intent. 

And then, before Crowley could even speak, Ezra was leaning up into him, pressing his lips to Crowley’s.

At first Crowley wasn’t kissing him back, he was scared, he was so _scared_ — but then he breathed in deeply and smelled, underneath soap and dust and pencil shavings, a hint, just a hint but it was _there,_ of ozone and lightning and the sky itself— and he breathed out, and moved his mouth against Ezra’s, and let go.

He let Ezra push him down onto the bed, and kiss him until his lips were raw. He let those warm hands inch their way underneath his shirt and around his back, where they pressed against his spine and rearranged every atom of his body into new and perfect constellations. He let his hips grind up against Ezra’s thighs, the rhythm of the embrace overtaking him, as Ezra’s mouth traced lines of liquid gold along the veins of his neck. 

And then Ezra moved a hand slowly to Crowley’s face, to take his glasses off, and Crowley hissed a harsh “ _No!”_ that made Ezra wince, drawing his hand away as though scalded.

“No,” said Crowley again, softer this time, “I can’t— my condition—” 

“But I want to see your face,” said Ezra. “All of it.” He traced a gentle finger down the side of Crowley’s cheek. 

And it was a cruel joke, what Crowley had to say next. Somewhere up there, the Almighty was surely laughing so hard She couldn’t breathe, all at one poor, wretched demon’s expense.

“I’m sorry. It’s just— this going a bit too fast for me.”

“Oh.” Ezra went still, and averted his eyes.

“I promise, it’s not you,” said Crowley, and he honestly didn’t know whether that was a lie or not. “You’re… you’re wonderful.” Not a lie. 

Ezra turned onto his back, putting inches of bed in between him and Crowley that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and Crowley felt the distance like a wound.

“I can stay here,” he said quickly, hating himself for how easily the words came out. “Let me stay. I’ll sleep next to you. Maybe it’ll help.”

Ezra pursed his lips, hesitating. Crowley lifted a hand and laid it on his shoulder, and it seemed like a millennium passed before finally, Ezra nodded, and said, “Alright.” 

Soon, with the assistance of the smallest of demonic miracles, Ezra was breathing slow and gentle, lost in a deep sleep. 

Crowley lay awake next to him, fully clothed, Aziraphale’s words running on repeat through his head. _Keep me safe. Be my friend._ That had been all he’d had time to say. 

But would something like _this_ even have occurred to Aziraphale, if he’d had _days_ to think about it? This impossibility, this thing that had bloomed, unbidden, somewhere unseen?

And oh, here was the rub: the deep understanding Crowley had maintained of exactly where they stood in relation to one another wasn’t exactly _delicate._ In fact, it was monolithic. Unshakeable. He knew it as well as he knew his own body, as well as he knew his own damned soul. A fragile few months of “we’re on our own side” could hardly be expected to stand up to six thousand years of habit, of restrictions that had become so ingrained in every action and thought that they’d camouflaged themselves as native components.

When you’re talking about bodies locked in orbit, forever circling each other, it takes two to tango. Forces opposed; action and reaction. One and the other. 

But the blank-slate version of Aziraphale sleeping beside Crowley in this cold little bed had no fear of Heaven, no fear of Falling. Not even a fear of snakes. He only had, as all humans did, the knowledge of good and bad, and the ability to make a choice.

The orbit shifts; one body goes crashing down into another. The magnet flips; attraction. A line in parallel tilts by degrees, and sends itself inexorably towards a new intersection.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit!”_ Crowley whispered furiously to himself, twisting a fistful of blanket violently around his fingers in a spasm of anxiety.

How could this have happened? How could he have _let_ this happen? Was he so cruel, so unforgivable that he hadn’t been able to hold himself back from this most selfish of temptations? Because this had to be his fault, it had to be something he’d done, how else to explain the way Ezra looked at him, the way he kissed him? 

Crowley’s head hurt, and he didn’t feel he deserved to just wish it away. He was a _demon,_ not exactly purpose-built to deal properly with moral and ethical dilemmas, never really expecting to _have_ to, and now here he was, neck-deep into a night that tore at him, clawing him open in a worse torture than anything he’d ever known his Head Office to dream up. 

If Aziraphale was here, he’d ask him what to do. The angel knew all about philosophy, he’d trotted around after Socrates like a lovestruck fool for years in Athens, he’d dined with Descartes and lost at poker to Foucault and he’d know just what to say.

(Whereas all Crowley had at his immediate disposal were some dim memories of that American sitcom about Hell he’d recently hate-watched out of sheer stubborn curiosity and ended up rather enjoying.)

But Aziraphale _wasn’t_ here. That was the whole blessed point. 

Crowley wanted to scream and break things and he wanted to drive his car very fast and not look where he was going and he wanted to lie here, in this bed, with Ezra.

He supposed one out of three wasn’t bad. 

The sun was barely beginning to come up, filtering through the thick glass of the window and alighting like silk on Ezra’s pale arms, when Crowley watched the former angel stir into waking. Lifting limbs that still looked heavy with the weight of sleep, he reached out for the notepad and pen on the bedside table, and began writing frantically.

Crowley made a show of moving around as if he had been awoken by Ezra’s movement, leaning up on one elbow to observe the creative process.

Ezra was making little noises of frustration as he wrote, and then finally he threw aside the pad and pen and ran his hands through his hair, making it stand up on end like he’d been electrocuted.

“What’s wrong?” Crowley said.

“There’s something _missing,_ ” said Ezra. “There’s someone _else_ in the dreams, a— a man, maybe, but I’m not sure— they’re always there. With me. And I _know_ the story won’t be complete without them, but I never, ever remember them when I wake up.” 

“Would you recognize them, if you saw them?”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely. But I don’t think I would ever— I mean, it’s not real. None of it is real. Just dreams.” 

“Right. Just dreams.”

Crowley let his hand drift down under the covers until it found Ezra’s, and he squeezed it gently. 

“Go back to sleep,” he said. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to open the shop.”

Ezra sighed an assent, leaning back onto his pillow, and drifted off to sleep again.

Crowley watched. He would never get tired of watching. He’d never seen Aziraphale sleep, not before tonight, and somehow, it was more intimate than any kiss, any touch. 

***

“So… how are _things_?” asked Jade. She was leaning against the door to the shop’s back room, where Mr. Fell was doing the store accounts on the glitchy old MacBook he’d brought with him from his old shop.

“Things?” Mr. Fell said lightly, not looking up.

“You know!”

“I’m rather sure I don’t, unless you’re asking about these tax exemptions.”

Jade cleared her throat ostentatiously. “How is _Anthony,”_ she emphasized. “He’s been by every day this week to see you, and I’m pretty sure I saw you two walking into Wow Bar last night, when I was on my way back to my flat. So, spill.”

“Oh. He’s lovely,” said Mr. Fell, and it was like a dam bursting. Jade practically expected his face to CGI-morph into the heart-eyes emoji, for how lovestruck he looked all of a sudden. 

She made a _go on, then_ wiggle with her eyebrows, and he sighed deeply and rolled his eyes before continuing.

“Well, he’s from London,” Mr. Fell began, “and he does something in finance, or, he did, but he’s told me he’s on sabbatical because he got fed up with the bankrupt morality of it all, which is so admirable, really… And he does this wonderful thing where he forgets what he’s going to say, and moves on, and hours later or the next day even he’ll remember, and bring it right back in the middle of whatever he’s talking about…”

Jade was wandering around the back room while he spoke, because she was the pacing type.

“And he knows everything about music, not just what you’d expect him to, dressing like that, but _good_ stuff, obscure stuff, movies too— I don’t know how he found the time, working in finance, to watch everything in the Criterion Collection, but he can go on and on about Tarkovsky and Kurosawa, it’s lovely.”

“Have you shown him your sketches and all?” said Jade, who had often caught Ezra in one of his creative moods, scribbling away on loose leaves of printer paper at the till, drawing angels and dogs and bicycles.

“Yes, and he’s quite fascinated by it… really, to a flattering degree, though I don’t know how much of it he actually understands…”

“I don’t know how much of it _anyone_ could understand,” said Jade. “It’s pretty, er, out there, Mr. Fell, no offense.”

“None taken,” said Mr. Fell, with a self-aware smile. “But anyway, he’s practically a mind-reader, he always seems to know exactly what I’m in the mood for, what I’ll like… And at first I thought he was _so_ grumpy, but I think that’s his _thing,_ you know, his _personal brand._ ” Mr. Fell made the appropriate air quotes around the phrase. “Really, once you get to know him, he’s so sweet, he loves gardening and outer space and little kids…” 

“Well, he sounds wonderful, Mr. Fell. I don’t wanna say I told you so, but, well.” 

She grinned at him— and then her eyes suddenly alighted on a spark of bronze, amidst the mess on top of one of the file cabinets beside his desk. 

She walked over and picked it up. It was a pocket watch, an old-fashioned one. On its lid, a beautiful geometric design of lines and curves formed what looked like a bird’s wing.

“This is lovely, where did you get it? I’ve been looking for an anniversary present for my girlfriend, you remember her, Kellie with the pink hair, she’s well into steampunk and clockwork and all that….”

Mr. Fell looked up and glanced at the watch, but not for long; his eyes slid right off it and back to his computer screen.

“Oh, it’s broken,” he said distractedly. “Be a dear, will you, and go print off the labels for tomorrow’s stock return pickup?” 

Jade frowned. Did he just change the subject on her? 

She looked down at the watch for just a moment before putting it down. It was almost like her hand didn’t want to let go of it, like she had to force her fingers open in order to let it fall back onto the top of the file cabinet. 

She let herself think, for a moment, about how strange it was— and then she put it out of her mind, and got back to work.

***

Historically speaking, Aziraphale had been the worrier, and Crowley had been there to reassure, to put a positive spin on things, to convince and cajole and persuade that it was all going to be OK. 

But the Apocalypse and all that followed had changed so many things, not the least of which was that in Aziraphale’s absence Crowley had taken up the mantle of Fretter In Residence. 

Currently, his main anxiety had to do with the sender of the note, the author of that cursed paper that had kicked this whole sorry affair off.

He was pretty sure it had to have been someone from Heaven, someone far up enough in the hierarchy to know of battle plans in advance. An angel who somehow had little enough fear of the retributive wrath of the Almighty or the Metatron or Gabriel to be able to pull a move like that, warning them far enough ahead of time for them to get the hell out of Dodge.

But then, _why?_ Why even warn them? What was the _point,_ because there _had_ to be one, there had to be something they were trying to _prove,_ or _prevent…_

Crowley imagined some undersecretary or assistant up in Heaven, sympathetic to his and Aziraphale’s cause for whatever reason, staging their own little private rebellion. It was a romantic thought, but unrealistic— all those underlings were sickeningly loyal, just like their counterparts in Hell, and besides, the chances of them slipping a message down to Earth undetected like that were low. 

The winter deepened, and Crowley continued his orbit around Ezra, as it grew paradoxically more unbearable and more wonderful. Spending time with the man had the unescapable effect of putting Crowley in mind of homeostasis, equilibrium: an eternal return. Even setting aside the dreams and the drawings, things were growing slowly back into patterns Crowley knew all too well.

A predilection for tartan expressed itself through button-up shirts. Arguments over art and music treaded verbal paths that Crowley had long worn thin with Aziraphale over the years.

Ezra started calling him by pet names; the familiar “my dear” and “darling” but also “sweetheart” and “love” and on one memorable occasion, “honeybee.”

(Crowley didn’t call him “angel.” Not even once.)

He was a demon, and he was a liar; this, however, was new territory for him. Telling Aziraphale the truth, risking a reversal of the curse, would put him directly in harm’s way. So too would disappearing, leaving him alone and mortal in a strange city.

But he couldn’t go on like this. He just couldn’t.

Four weeks passed in this limbo-like state, and it was the day before New Year’s Eve. Ezra had suggested Crowley meet him at the shop before heading to dinner and then to spend the night at his, and Crowley was planning on telling him _something,_ something kind but firm and mature and reasonable, something that would put and end to this terrible charade but still somehow allow Crowley to continue his ongoing vigil. He hadn’t thought of anything yet, despite multiple open tabs on his phone’s browser from a Google of _“how to stay friends after a breakup,”_ but he was sure it would come to him. 

Crowley came around the corner, and spotted Ezra locking up the shop with that assistant of his, Jade, beside him. They were chatting convivially as Jade pulled down the shutters, and then suddenly a gust of wind blew down the street and Jade’s hat went flying off her head. 

Reflexively, Ezra reached up to grab it as it went sailing past him, but a second breeze came by as he did so, propelling it higher into the air, and his hand missed it by inches; he stepped backwards further, arm windmilling towards the free-spirited purple accessory.

Jade was laughing at his antics, and then all at once she wasn’t anymore, because Ezra had stumbled backwards as his heel missed the curb, and tripped over the gutter into the road, landing hard on his back, sprawled out on the pavement. 

And Crowley was watching this unfold from across the street, his eyes darting from Jade to Ezra and then to the car, now coming roaring up the road from behind them, neither of them were looking, neither of them saw—

“ _Aziraphale!”_

Crowley broke into a sprint; the driver of the car couldn’t see Ezra where he was lying, and it _wasn’t slowing down._ Ezra’s head rose up off the road just in time to turn and see the car bearing down on him, his face forming a mask of slow-dawning terror. 

Crowley wasn’t going to reach him in time, he was miles away, and then almost a second too late he remembered that he was a _demon._

He flung out a hand; the car’s engine choked and sputtered, the brakes squealed of their own accord and the car ground to a halt, the fender mere millimeters from Ezra’s blond halo.

And then Crowley reached Ezra and his hands were around him and he was dragging him out of the way of the car, back up onto the curb in front of the shop where Jade was standing, frozen stock-still in panic. 

Slumped on the ground, he held Ezra in his arms, bringing him close, feeling him shake underneath his touch. 

“It’s all right. I’ve got you,” Crowley whispered, “I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re okay, you’re fine, I’m here. I’m here. Deep breaths. Come on, deep breaths.” His fingers drifted up through Ezra’s hair, as if to count each individual strand, make sure they were all still there. 

After a moment Ezra pulled his head away from Crowley’s shoulder slowly, looking up at him. “What did you yell? From across the street, I heard you—”

“Your name,” said Crowley thickly, “I said your name.” 

“Oh, Anthony, you’re crying,” said Ezra, and he unfolded himself within Crowley’s arms enough to lift one of his still-shaking hands to Crowley’s cheek. With a gentle thumb he wiped a tear away from below the frame of Crowley’s shades.

“You scared me,” said Crowley, and he leaned in to Ezra’s touch until their foreheads met. “You can’t ever scare me like that.”

By now Jade had regained her senses and rushed over, crouching beside the two of them on the pavement.

“Mr. Fell, are you alright? Should I— I can dial 999, if you need me to—” 

“No, no, Jade, I’m quite alright, just a little shaken,” Ezra assured her. “It was a good thing Anthony was here, otherwise I… Well. It doesn’t bear thinking about.” He gave a weak little smile. 

Crowley helped Ezra up to his feet, a steady arm around his waist and another under his shoulder, and saw Jade staring right at him. 

Had she noticed something? Was she about to say, _that car, it wasn’t going to stop, how did you do that?_ He really didn’t want to deal with suspicious humans right now; wiping her memory would be easy but it was the sort of thing he was loath to do in front of Ezra, even if Ezra wouldn’t see it, with his face now bent into Crowley’s neck and his eyes closed, breathing deeply and gratefully. 

“Your hat,” Crowley said to Jade, thinking fast and nodding over towards the road. Next to the stopped car, whose owner was blessedly ignoring the scene on the sidewalk and instead worriedly inspecting the now-smoking bonnet of the vehicle, was the purple hat, miraculously undamaged. 

With one last squint at Crowley she tore herself away and darted into the street to retrieve her hat. And after reassuring Crowley emphatically that he was totally alright, Ezra led them off down the road to their dinner reservation.

Crowley didn’t break up with Ezra that night. Or the next night, on New Year’s Eve.

No, that night he let Ezra lead him to the bedroom, and he let him turn off the light, and close the shutters all the way, and Crowley laid down and closed his eyes and said “Okay. You can do it now,” and Ezra slowly, reverently lifted the glasses from Crowley’s head. 

He let Ezra’s fingers ghost over his eyelids, brushing past his lashes and up into the hollows below his brow. They felt like prayers.

“I wish you could open your eyes,” Ezra said quietly. 

_Oh, Aziraphale,_ thought Crowley, and he said, “I do too,” and he let sensation and sound overtake him, as the evening passed into the night and one year passed into the next.

New years were a funny thing. You’d expect someone who’d been around as long as Crowley had to have quit paying attention to them ages ago. But Crowley had never stopped being amazed at how they just kept _happening_ ; how the world kept turning, the constellations always returning to their places in the sky, with a reliable rhythm like a really good chorus.

It must have been around when BC turned to AD that he realized he’d started marking out the years by whether or not he saw Aziraphale during their passage. A mental calendar, like so many pebbles in a mosaic, either black or white. Early on, those long interrupted stretches of black were the default, but over the centuries the white squares began to advance, covering the board in the beautiful pattern of the Arrangement.

He’d waited so long and he could’ve gone on for so much longer, if that was what it would take. If this madness had never happened, if they’d remained locked in their stable trajectory, he could’ve been comfortable, he would’ve been happy. Well, happy enough, for a demon.

But now, in the dead, gray, winter, feeling the way his own skin responded to the gentle and insistent hands of this former angel, it was as if six thousand years of learned patience had evaporated, leaving only desire.

***

It was a mid-January afternoon. Mr. Fell had gone out to lunch with Anthony, and Jade was supposed to be manning the till, but the receipt printer had run out of paper, so she was digging around in the back room for a new roll. Oh, _why_ did Mr. Fell have to be so incorrigibly messy, usually she would just _ask_ him where stuff was and he’d somehow know, but he wasn’t here and it was impossible to find anything without him…

She shuffled aside stacks of junk mail and publishing catalogues, looking for the little blue plastic bin she was pretty sure contained the receipt rolls. On top of the file cabinet, her hand brushed aside an old magazine to reveal that small bronze pocket watch.

Jade stared at it guardedly. She felt like it was staring right back at her. Whatever it was that had made her not want to let it go, the first time she’d picked it up— it was stronger now. It was _calling_ to her. 

She was alone in the back room, but she still nervously looked around first, before reaching out to take hold of the watch. Picking it up, turning it over in her hands, it felt… _warm._

And now, could she be imagining that strange frequency, thrumming through her nerves? Could she be imagining that it was the very same odd frisson that had shaken her insides a few weeks ago, when Anthony had run across the street, somehow saving Ezra from the car that surely had been about to kill him? 

Jade remembered her nan, back in Sheffield, always telling her to trust her bones, to believe her skin, because the body knows things before the mind does. _It is always one step ahead_ , her nan would say, _it is always leading the dance._

And so when every bone in her body, despite all logic, was telling her that _there was someone in this watch,_ she believed it, fully and without reservation.

She could feel her blood rushing in her ears. It wasn’t right, for people to be inside of things. 

Slowly, she pressed down on the hinge, and the watch swung open. 

There was light, and there was sound, and then there were images, flashing before her eyes in vivid white and blue and black—

_“It’s all going to be rather lovely” … “Get thee behind me, foul fiend” … “Oh, the books, I forgot all about the books” … “I got carried away” … “Think of something, or I’ll never talk to you again” … “Temptation accomplished” …_

She staggered backwards, slamming up against the door, the glow of the watch filling her head with visions of angels and demons, hell and heaven, fast cars and good wine and six thousand years of fear and forgiveness— and it was too much— far too much for her— 

With a gasp of strength she snapped the watch closed. The hurricane of sensation ceased; the watch buzzed hot and alive in her hand, and she slumped down against the door until she was sitting on the ground, breathing hard. The air was thick with a strange liquidity, a foreboding slackness that served only to warn of future tension.

“Oh, Mr. Fell,” she whispered. “What have I done?” 

***

Somewhere in the open-plan vault of Heaven, the Archangel Gabriel was sitting at his desk. It was wide and white and empty of everything except a thick manila file folder marked _BATTLE PLANS,_ the glowing glass rectangle of his angelic phone, and a sheet of lined paper.

With a stainless steel pen that looked like it not only could write in outer space, but calculate orbital trajectories on its own while it was up there, he was carefully setting words down onto the paper, muttering as he went.

“ _My ardor heaves for..._ No. _My ardor stirs for you…_ Hmm. _For only you?_ or … _for your loins only_ —”

Then there was the sound of footsteps coming from close by and Gabriel startled, dropping the pen onto the desk with a clunk. Hastily, he waved a hand over it and the paper, and they both disappeared from the desk’s surface as Uriel approached. 

“Confidential battle business,” he said, a little too quickly, in response to her glance at his movement. “What do you want?” 

“We’ve located him,” said Uriel. “Aziraphale. The weapon.” 

She placed a printout of a map on his desk, centering on Cardiff. Gabriel peered at it intently.

“Wonderful work, Uriel,” he said, running a finger slowly over the X-marked spot on the map where Aziraphale’s angelic signature had been detected. 

“His power will be what we need to tip the balance of the war early on,” Uriel continued, a triumphant, steely note entering her voice. “The metaphysical battlefield will tremble beneath us. The forces of Hell will not be expecting such an unexpected volley. Lord Beelzebub and her forces will cower before our Heavenly might.” 

“Mmhmm,” said Gabriel. He had a far-off look in his eyes. Uriel tipped her head at him, waiting for him to contribute to the conversation, but when he didn’t, she cleared her throat.

“Well?” she said. “Shall we, you know… go fetch the bastard?” 

Gabriel clapped his hands. “Yes. Do that. We’ll do that, right now. Very good. Here we go.”

She nodded, and turned to go, striding off confidently down into the empty distance of the Executive Floor. 

When he was sure she wasn’t looking, he grabbed the glass phone off his desk, and stowed it in his suit pocket before following quickly after her.

***

Crowley arrived back at the flat with Ezra after lunch, admiring the way the cold sent his face and the tips of his ears a delightful pink.

“I’d better go down and check on Jade, see how she’s doing,” said Ezra, grabbing his work bag but not taking his coat off. “But you stay here, my dear, make yourself at home, my casa et cetera, except if you try to clean up or put anything away I’ll have you for breaking and entering, that’s a promise.” 

Crowley stared at him as he went. _Humans are so stupid when they’re in love,_ he thought, not for the first time in the last few weeks. 

Something Aziraphale had once said about how incompetent they both were echoed in his mind. He allowed himself a moment of private contemplation to dwell on the idea that, perhaps, demons were stupid when they were in love as well, which would certainly explain a lot. 

From the kitchen table, he picked up one of Ezra’s latest sketches. It showed the familiar interior of the Soho bookshop, in particular the sofa in the backroom, the very one where they’d made their handshake deal to try and avert the Apocalypse. It felt like a million years ago, and it felt like yesterday.

He leaned back in his chair, taking off his glasses and pressing his palms to his eyes. “Two more weeks,” he groaned to himself. “You can do this, Crowley.” 

Of course, that was precisely when the whole flat shook with a great cracking _boom,_ and the smell of lightning and the whoosh of great invisible wings filled the air. 

They’d found him.

***

Jade had still been sitting against the backroom door, clutching the watch close to her chest, when she heard the front door jingle and the telltale sound of Mr. Fell’s prim footsteps entering the shop.

Instinctively, she shoved the watch into her jeans pocket and scrambled to her feet, opening the door just in time to greet Mr. Fell on his way back in from lunch. 

“Be a dear, would you, Jade,” Mr. Fell said casually, taking his coat off, “and go restock this week’s _Gair Rhydd_ in the bin out front? The new issue just came in, the stack is right there.”

She was staring at him, slack-jawed, she knew she was, but she’d _seen_ him, she’d seen him and he had _wings,_ she’d seen inside his _head_ and he was powerful and ancient and wise and kind, and she was _scared._

He looked at her suspiciously, as if he were about to ask her if something was wrong. But before he could say anything, she nodded mutely, picked up the stack of free student newspapers, and walked, on legs that felt like jelly, through the shop and out the front door. 

The frigid air outside was a shock to her system, gooseflesh prickling on her bare arms and condensing her scattered consciousness into some semblance of concentration. _Right. Mr. Fell is an angel, then. And his boyfriend is... a demon?_ she thought, trying to get it all straight in her head, as if there were about to be a pop quiz.

She had just set the papers down in their dispenser, when suddenly there was a bright flash of light, and a huge clap of thunder that shook the entire block. The air filled with the smell of ozone and metal and fury. 

Jade turned, flattening herself against the window of the shop, to see people fleeing from the bookshop as four imposing figures manifested in the middle of the road and began walking, with militaristic precision, towards her.

She recognized them. She _remembered_ them, from memories that weren’t her own. She’d seen them, inside the watch. Michael, Sandalphon, Uriel and Gabriel. The visceral fear that ran through her at the sight of them was her own, but it was also Mr. Fell’s— _Aziraphale’s._

The short one, Sandalphon, approached her, and grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Where’s the angel?” he leered. “We’ve come to collect him.”

Jade shook her head, wincing away from Sandalphon’s grip, which was strong as steel and cold as ice. She wasn’t going to give Mr. Fell up so easily, not when she knew how much was at stake. 

“You stay away from Mr. Fell, you— you _bad angels,_ ” she spat, with as much fury as she could muster, the insult coming to her unbidden from somewhere inside the watch in her pocket.

“A loyal friend, are you?” Sandalphon said, his mouth open wide in a glinting mockery of a smile. “Perfect. We can use you as bait.” 

He dragged her back out into the middle of the street, where the three other angels stood. Gabriel, the tall one, nodded approvingly at Sandalphon’s captive, and called out towards the shop: 

“Come on out, angel! Or the human with the funny hair gets it!” 

***

His forehead pressed to the frosty front window of Ezra’s flat, Crowley watched the angels file down the street and grab hold of the girl. He gritted his teeth and flexed his hand into a fist, trying to get that good old demonic blood-fury pumping through his veins. 

He couldn’t face the angels alone. Damn the plan, it was all over now, the only way he was getting out of this was together with Aziraphale, that’s the way they’d done it before, the only way— they were useless on their own, that much had been proven over and over again. 

With a snap of his fingers Crowley transported himself a floor below to the middle of the shop, and stalked towards the back room.

Ezra blinked, his human brain struggling with the magical apparition of his boyfriend in the middle of his shop, before quickly giving up and deciding he must have just come in when he wasn’t paying attention.

“Anthony— what’s going _on,_ who are those people out there—” 

Crowley pushed past him into the back room, over to the file cabinet where he remembered seeing the watch lying just the other day, the last time he was in here— but it wasn’t there. He pushed aside piles of junk and boxes and papers, and came up empty handed.

“Where is it, oh, where is it, where did you _put_ the damned thing!” Crowley groaned in frustration, digging through a crate of receipts as Ezra watched, horrified, from the doorway. Was he going to have to do it by hand? Trigger a manual reversion of the curse? 

“What thing? What are you _doing?_ Tell me, Anthony, please tell me what’s happening, I don’t know what’s going on and I’m scared—”

Crowley gave up on his fruitless search and whirled around to face Ezra, grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Your name is Aziraphale, you’re an angel, a Principality, guardian of the Eastern Gate, I need you to _remember!_ ” 

“What? What are you talking about?”

In response, Crowley took his glasses off, threw them to the ground where they landed with an unceremonious clatter. 

“Look at me. _Look at me._ I’m Crowley. I’m a demon, I’m your _friend_ , I’m—” 

“Oh no, no, no, no,” whimpered Ezra, terrified the way only a human could be at the sight of Crowley’s snake-slit eyes, so scared that he closed his own and twisted away from Crowley, in a full-body cower that ended with him on the floor, backing away until he hit the file cabinet. 

Crowley felt like he was going to fall apart, but instead he just fell to his knees beside Ezra, reaching out for him.

“We stopped the Apocalypse together, you and me— Tadfield, Adam, the Horsemen, you remember—”

“Those are just— just my stories, my dreams, you’ve been reading the papers on my wall, my sketches, it’s not _real!_ You _know_ it’s not real! _”_ His eyes were still closed, shaking his head as if he could erase the sight of Crowley’s monstrous visage from his mind like an Etch-A-Sketch.

“Open your eyes, Aziraphale, _look at me!”_ Crowley hissed, panicking. 

“Stop _calling_ me that,” Ezra said, his voice a wrecked sob. 

“That’s your _name!”_

“No it’s not, it’s not, I’m Ezra Fell, I’m from Port Talbot, I was a schoolteacher for twenty years and then I opened a shop and then I moved it here because— because I— I…”

“Because you _what?_ ” snapped Crowley, harsher than he intended to. “Tell me why you moved it, except I don’t think you can, because you _never did._ I miracled this shop up, going along with the curse I had to put on you!”

“So what are you saying, Anthony? That I’m not _real?_ That I’m just— I’m just a dream someone _else_ is having? How could you _say_ that? You _know_ me! Don’t you know me?” 

“I’m sorry, I really am. But it’s true. It was always going to end like this, for you. Three months and Aziraphale would be back— back with me—”

Ezra was silent for a moment, staring at the ground, letting the tears run down his pale cheeks.

“This... this Aziraphale,” he said, brokenly, “you said you were his _friend…_ does he love you? Does he love you, the way I do?”

And that was it for Crowley. The anger drained out of him as if a dam had burst, leaving him with only a vast emptiness, a barren plain upon which bombs of doubt and fear were starting to fall.

“ _I_ _don’t know,_ ” cried Crowley, collapsing against Ezra, there on the floor, “I don’t think he _can—_ ” 

“But how could he not? How could _anyone_ not love you?” Ezra’s hand came around now to Crowley’s face, where it lingered there, with that soft elegance Crowley’s entire world had long learned to revolve around.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Crowley said, “we’re too different, we were on different sides for so long, _too_ long, I don’t know if he knows _how…_ ”

“Then he’s an idiot,” said Ezra bitterly, “and you’re an idiot too, if you haven’t tried to teach him.”

A harsh voice, magically amplified, boomed through the shop. It was Gabriel, sounding ruthless and impatient. 

“ _Aziraphale, this is your last chance. Surrender to the forces of Heaven. We have your friend and we’re not afraid to smite her._ ”

Ezra looked up and out towards the exit to the shop, his distress taking on a new tone. “They’ve got Jade out there— oh, the poor girl— what are they going to _do_ with her?” 

“Nothing good,” said Crowley weakly, “they’ve been looking for you for months, and now that they’ve come this far they won’t let anything stop them from getting to you, especially not a human.”

“Not _me,_ please, it’s _him_ they want! _”_

“It’s him _I_ want! I need him back, I need that _watch—_ ” began Crowley, and immediately regretted it, because oh, that look on Ezra’s face, the crumbling, _human_ disappointment that sent waves of guilt rending through Crowley’s chest.

“The watch,” Ezra said suddenly, his stormcloud eyes widening in realization. “oh, Jade noticed it the other week, she must have picked it up— she’s got it out there with her— if I can get it from her, give it to _them—_ maybe they might go away—” 

He picked himself up from the ground and stumbled out of the backroom, towards the front door of the shop.

Crowley could only watch him go, frozen for far too long, wondering what he’d done — and then he regained control over his body, and bolted out after him.

Outside, the street was silent and empty and cold. It was though a clear bubble had been dropped over the block, stopping the wind from blowing, muting the sounds of the city completely. 

There were no passersby, no cars trundling down the road. Only the angels, holding court. Gabriel was in the center of the road, flanked by Michael and Uriel. Sandalphon stood off to his left, holding Jade by the arm in a vice grip. 

In front of them all, Ezra was standing, looking like he could barely keep himself upright in the face of the imposing congress of ethereal beings, who were radiating power and presence and the very real potential of some good old-fashioned smiting. 

Sandalphon was sniffing the air, glancing from Ezra to Gabriel and then back again, a confused look on his already-stupid face.

“That’s not Aziraphale,” he said dumbly, pointing at Ezra. “That’s a _human_.”

“I can see that,” Gabriel said, his brow furrowing in confusion. 

Ezra found his tongue, and began shouting frantically. “The angel is in the watch, Jade, you’ve got to give it to them, it’s what they want, they’ll let you go!” He was pointing to her pocket, where her hand was closed around that precious object. 

“What’s this about a watch?” said Gabriel, looking curiously from Ezra to Jade. His violet eyes drilled into her like twin knives. 

Michael twigged quickly to the implications of Ezra’s outburst. “Demonic magic, must be,” she said, in a tone of stern disapproval mixed with amazement. “The angel’s soul has been stowed away.... That’s why we couldn’t find him until now. How... _clever._ Well, leave these humans, then, and get the watch, we don’t need his corporation for our plan—”

“ _No!”_

With a shout, Crowley leapt into the road, planting himself squarely in between Ezra and the oncoming storm of the angelic host. 

“Oh, look who it is,” Michael sneered from Gabriel’s side, “the doting demon.” 

“Take me!” cried Crowley. “Take me instead!”

Gabriel looked down at him, disbelief radiating from his sharply-suited form.

“What? _Why_ would we do that?” said Uriel. “It’s the angel we need. He has the power. He alone can give us the advantage over the forces of Hell.”

“You idiots, do I have to spell it out? It’s me you want, _I’m_ the one who spat hellfire at you at the trial,” said Crowley, the confession falling ungracefully from his mouth. “We swapped bodies to fool you all, so we could get away with it all and you’d leave us _alone._ We just wanted to be left alone, but you couldn’t take the bloody hint, could you?” 

Now Gabriel spoke, and his voice was uncharacteristically neutral, with no trace of his usual condescension. “You... would sacrifice _yourself_ to save an _angel_ ? But you’re a _demon._ ” 

“I would die a million times over for him, you _prick!_ You could never understand, none of you heartless bastards could! I _love_ him! And I have loved him, and I will love him, _forever,_ even if you take me, even if you kill me, I’ll love him after the last atom of my being has blown away to nothing, until after the last star in the sky has burned out, that is a _promise,_ I swear on my Fallen soul.”

Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon wore expressions of outrage, but Gabriel’s face was utterly unreadable as Crowley dropped to his knees before them all, hands balling up into fists on the cold pavement. 

“Stopping Armageddon, yeah, it was a whole thing, save the planet, save the humans, I was all in, and I know you have no reason to believe a _demon,_ but I’m telling the truth— I _mean_ it when I say I did it as much for him as I did it for anyone. He couldn’t bear the thought of a world without his books and his music but I just couldn’t bear the thought of a world without him, or even— even a time when I’d ever have to fight against him, that was _worse_ , so I had to make sure none of it ever happened, you see?” 

Ezra, standing some feet behind Crowley, moved his eyes up to where Jade was standing, still locked in Sandalphon’s greasy grasp. He met her gaze, and nodded, and she understood. 

She took the watch from her pocket, and tossed it forward. 

The watch flew from her hand, in a slow, graceful arc that crossed right over Crowley’s prostrate form, laid out in desperation between Ezra and the angels, and Ezra caught it easily. He held it in his palm. His face, of late a mask of distress, slowly relaxed into something more solemn. 

Michael nudged Gabriel urgently, pointing to the watch, she’d seen it change hands, but he shushed her with a jab of his elbow as Crowley continued:

“I wouldn’t last long in a world without him anyway, I really wouldn’t. So if you need a weapon that bad, if you need to win your stupid _war,_ take me, use me, I don’t _care,_ just don’t lay a finger on him because this all can’t have been for nothing, it _can’t have been!_ Please…!”

And now he lifted his head again, to look up at the faces of the Archangels, to see if this useless, mortifying babble had had any effect on their carven-stone faces—

But they weren’t looking down at him anymore. Jade was the one who caught his eye, and then raised a shaking finger to point up, into the sky behind him.

And Crowley stood up, and turned around, looking to where she was pointing, not daring to hope what he would see—

There was a figure, bathed in in a white glow, rising high above them all; white wings, stretching out to their full span, that began to beat with a sound that was like a river and a rocket launch and an earthquake all at once. A ripple of light flashed down the length of his body and his clothes transformed, from the jacket and jeans he’d been wearing into an ever-so-familiar getup, complete with bow-tie.

Angelic power was radiating down on the street like a thousand suns, so intensely that even Gabriel and the others winced away from it. As they put their hands up to shield their eyes, Jade slipped herself free from Sandalphon’s grip and staggered off to the side, her eyes locked on the ascended form of the otherworldly creature above her. 

Backing up against a parked car, she could feel the air growing hot; it had been freezing just seconds ago but the sheer kinetic power of Aziraphale’s reconstitution had shaken up every molecule for a square kilometer, turning a frigid Cardiff midday into something resembling, temperature-wise, a Mediterranean afternoon.

Meanwhile, somewhere inside Crowley’s head, a logical voice was shrieking about how the Archangels could strike Aziraphale down then and there if they so desired, Crowley had given up the secret to their swap, they now knew _neither_ of them had secret special powers— 

But it didn’t matter. 

He stepped forward, and the angel lowered himself to the ground. They met, inches apart. 

Inside Crowley, there was deep, fresh relief, battling it out with an old, dusty shame. Aziraphale was still glowing somewhat, the last remnants of the curse shaking themselves free in golden sparkles that fell to the ground around his feet. His wings folded up behind him, back to the in-between space where they were usually kept. 

“How much of that... did you hear?” Crowley asked, because he had to, because he couldn’t ask _how much of the last two and a half months do you remember._

“Enough,” Aziraphale said, and kissed him.

Jade had seen Mr. Fell and Anthony kiss before, of course, at least a few times in the last month and change, but this was nothing like that. 

This was the meeting of two celestial bodies; this was order, defiant in the face of entropy; this was the tide sweeping in after a long long time out at sea; this was belonging, believing, being known.

Jade’s heart quickened. She found herself welling up with tears, thinking of her girlfriend, thinking of her ex-boyfriend, thinking of all the love she’d had so far in her 23 years and how it all felt like nothing, nothing at all against the cosmic enormity of the love on display in the middle of the street right now— and yet somehow, at the same time, it felt utterly identical, the mundanity and simplicity of it shared wholly between her, and the two men kissing there, and the hundreds of thousands of human souls in this city.

Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon were all making disgusted faces at the sight, rather like a bunch of children being forced to eat asparagus. Gabriel just stared, his eyes wide.

Crowley pulled back, breathless, his hands on the sides of Aziraphale’s face. 

“You don’t— you’re not angry— that I—?” 

Aziraphale shook his head. “It does seem my body had ideas of its own. Got a bit ahead of me, unsupervised, as it were. But how could I be _angry?_ At _you,_ Crowley? For something so selfless? For staying by his side, for being what he needed you to be?” 

“I hadn’t really thought about it like that,” mumbled Crowley. 

“Of _course_ you hadn’t,” said Aziraphale with gentle understanding. “All it means is that I’ll have to play just a little bit of catch up.” 

He frowned, then, the tiniest twist of doubt bubbling up onto his expressive face. “That is… if you want me to, I suppose—”

“I can’t believe you,” said Crowley, and dove back in to kiss him again, in response.

“What are we _waiting_ for, Gabriel?” Uriel hissed, impatient. “Let’s kill the angel, and take the demon, while they’re… eugh, _distracted._ ”

Gabriel held up a finger, silencing Uriel, and hesitated for only a moment before stepping forward and clapping his hands, as if he had a big announcement to make. 

Crowley and Aziraphale drew apart, tensing up, preparing to stand their ground, but when Gabriel spoke it wasn’t to command his lackeys to _seize them!_ as might have been expected.

Instead, he smiled that big, toothy smile of his, and said proudly, “Just so you know, I sent the note.” 

Aziraphale gaped. 

_“_ What? _What?”_ Crowley said. 

Uriel mouthed _W_ _hat note?_ at Michael. Sandalphon stood there looking confused, which was little different from his default expression.

Gabriel was now preening. “Yeah. Yeah! This is so great, you guys. For me, personally. I mean, look at this. Hold on— hold on— can you just, do that again? The kissing thing? There’s someone I wanna show—” 

From his pocket he took out something Aziraphale recognized as an angelic phone, and swiped it open, dialing up the equivalent of ethereal FaceTime on its glass screen. He started gabbing away as soon as the call picked up; but he was too far away for them to see or hear who he was talking to. 

“No— no— well, I’m glad you liked that last letter, I promise there’s an even better one coming your way tomorrow— but listen, listen, I’m down here on Earth and you’ll never believe it— an angel and a demon, all up on each other— it was this crazy idea I had, but my God it worked, well, of course it did because I’m a genius, but _look!”_

He spun the camera around, on selfie-mode, to face Aziraphale and Crowley, and so they finally saw on its screen the person Gabriel was talking to, and it was…

“ _Beelzebub?!”_ Crowley whispered hoarsely. 

“That’s unlikely,” said Aziraphale.

Gabriel waved up at the screen, nodding his head towards Crowley and Aziraphale. “C’mon guys, show her how it’s done!”

Crowley and Aziraphale did not move. 

“Okay, okay, I get it,” said Gabriel, turning to remove the two of them from the frame of the camera.

“I don’t,” said Crowley bluntly, his cursed curiosity getting the better of him. “Explain, please.” 

“Call you back, babe,” said Gabriel to the phone, and thumbed the app closed, staring accusatorially at Crowley. 

“Just so you know,” he said, “I don’t like either of you, and in fact I think you’re both kind of pathetic.” 

“Yes, quite,” Aziraphale said. 

“ _B_ _ut._ Your… _rapport_ in Tadfield was… Well. Let’s just say, after I dwelled on it for a few days, it presented... the viability of certain synergistic potentialities.” 

Crowley had to forcibly stop himself from making mock-retching noises at the sound of that horrid phrase. 

“So,” Gabriel continued, “when Michael came to me with the plan to use _that_ one as a weapon”— he pointed at Aziraphale— “I said absolutely, because inside _that_ plan, I could put _another_ plan, _my_ plan.”

This seemed a bit like overkill to Crowley, who was a big fan of plans, but could never have been said to dabble in anything resembling _machinations._

“Anyway, I gotta say, wasn’t expecting all this stuff with the watch and the girl and the—” Gabriel gestured expansively at the gray street as if he’d forgotten the word _Wales,_ or, more than likely, never learned it in the first place — “but it really worked out perfectly. I mean, that speech. Wow! Not exactly my _thing_ , but you really _went_ for it. She thought it wasn’t possible— for a demon to have that kind of … capacity. But now— look at you two! All the proof she needs!”

He beamed around at the assembled personages, looking verifiably, objectively insane. 

“Anyway. Speaking of her. I better go. Places to be, things to do, fluids to swap— it’s a brand new quarter, and I smell a merger.”

“But what. About. The _war_ …?” said Sandalphon, deliberately.

“And the _weapon?_ ” Uriel furiously prompted.

“I don’t care! Cancel it! Call it all off! That’s probably what she’s doing right now on her end, anyway! Who’s got the time?” 

The other three Archangels were speechless. Crowley was trying very hard not to giggle. 

Gabriel swiped on his phone again, held it to his ear and said, “I’m comin’ for you, baby! Love wins! Yeah!” 

And then he disappeared, in a flash of purple light. 

Sandalphon and Uriel exchanged intensely panicked looks. Michael shot a dagger-eyed glare, full of shock and blame, over to Crowley and Aziraphale, before all three of the lower Archangels disappeared as well. 

The bubble over the street lifted instantly. The sounds of the city returned, as did the gusting, cold wind. A customer ambled mundanely towards the bookshop door, and Jade quickly hurried to assist him, casting a meaningful glance over her shoulder before disappearing inside.

Aziraphale let what they’d just experienced have a few moments to sink in, before clearing his throat politely. 

“Well. They’re going to be busy with that for a while up there, I think.”

“You _think?_ ” Crowley said, happily incredulous. “Angel, we thought _we_ were trouble— they’re gonna need to invent whole new _departments_ to deal with those two.”

A smile crinkled the edges of Aziraphale's eyes. He looked immensely tired, but overwhelmingly proud. “It’s fitting, I think,” he said. “Seeds of their own destruction, and all that.” 

Crowley reached out for Aziraphale’s hand, then, and held it quietly for a moment. 

“Penny for your thoughts, my dear?” said Aziraphale, ever so casually.

Crowley was, at that moment, having many thoughts. A great, ever-turning roll of thoughts, pinging their way past his frontal cortex a dozen at a time, like a player piano on amphetamines. Thoughts about memory, and humanity, and love, and punishment, and responsibility, and the unsettling implications of the word “merger,” and how excited he was to get his car back— amongst others. 

He selected one of the lighter options. 

“Think you could still do the accent? I got a bit used to it. Actually, I may have developed a fetish.”

***

The bookshop in Cardiff may have been miracled into existence in accordance with the curse, but that didn’t mean it would just cease to exist now that Aziraphale had been returned to his usual angelic self. 

“You’re just— going to _give_ it to me?” Jade stammered, holding up the key Aziraphale had handed to her, as she stood with him and Crowley inside the shop the next morning. 

“Well,” said Aziraphale kindly, “I’ve got my _real_ bookshop in London to get back to, but I think everyone around here has grown quite fond of this one, so it would be a shame to close it up for good.” He turned to Crowley. “Wouldn’t it be, my dear?” 

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” agreed Crowley, though Jade was certain from the way he was looking at Aziraphale he would’ve agreed with anything the angel said at all, if it meant he got to see that smile. 

It turned out that running a bookshop wasn’t all _that_ hard, not when its rent was paid automatically, and stock tended to miraculously appear each week without having to place any orders. She taught her girlfriend Kellie how to work the till, and started stocking zines and prints from local artists, but other than that, her routine remained mostly the same as it’d been with Mr. Fell in charge. 

Upstairs, in Mr. Fell’s old flat above the shop, Jade collected up all of the papers and sketches that had filled the place full to bursting by the end of his residency. And she read them all, every single page. 

The gaps in the story were easy enough to fill in, with what memories lingered from her experience holding the open watch. And so before she quite knew what she was doing, she was copying it all down, straightening it out and expanding it into a document on her computer that grew and grew until, a few months later, she found herself with a completed novel. 

She sent a copy of the final draft to the Soho address she’d been left, and received no direct response, but was not quite as surprised as she should’ve been to receive, later that week, a large shipment of beautifully printed and bound versions. The manuscript had been expertly copy-edited and corrected, and a number of footnotes had been added. 

She put the books up for sale quietly and without fanfare, and was not quite surprised as she should’ve been when it became one of the shop’s best-sellers, nearly right off the bat. 

And when, responding to unexpected demand, she did a small book signing at the shop one bright summer morning, she was also not quite as surprised as she should’ve been to look up, and see that next in line were a familiar pair of man-shaped beings.

“Big fan,” said Crowley to Jade, that wide and wicked grin of his sending a flutter of instinctive primal fear down into her gut, which she quickly admonished internally by telling it, _he’s quite a nice guy, you know._

“Such a lovely book,” added Aziraphale. “I enjoyed the part when the car is on fire.” 

Crowley gave him a smirk. “I like the part where you say _fuck._ ” 

Aziraphale blushed a deep red, and, avoiding Crowley’s insistent gaze, leaned closer in to Jade across the signing table. “I must say, dear girl, you did do a wonderful job. Such spark and vigor!”

She smiled. “Really, it’s not me you should be complimenting,” she said. “I just sort of put it all together, you know…” 

“Angel, we’re holding up the line,” said Crowley, nudging Aziraphale gently. “Give her the book.”

“Oh— oh, of course, of course.” Aziraphale handed over his paperback, and Jade flipped it open, her pen poised above the title page, with its clever little logotype. 

“Who shall I make it out to?” she asked.

Aziraphale thought for only a moment before saying, with only a slight air of wistfulness, “Oh, how about— to Ezra.” 

Jade smiled. On the title page, she wrote: _To Ezra, who helped teach you two something you both already knew. All the love, Jade Jenkins._

She handed the book back to Aziraphale, who thanked her graciously. Crowley gave her a wave, and they turned to go. Aziraphale’s free hand found Crowley’s, and their fingers intertwined so gently and perfectly it seemed as if their bodies had been created to fit together, all the way back in the beginning. 

Jade smiled as they went. You had to love a happy ending. 

  


****

**Author's Note:**

> my original notes for this whole thing just read “david tennant sobby cry face” and “let aziraphale be welsh” so please understand those were my guiding principles here. 
> 
> also i am choosing to blame my recent binge of season 4 of legends of tomorrow for the tonal whiplash of the ending. if you know, you know.
> 
> i'm on tumblr! [@areyougonnabe](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com)


End file.
